by murphzero
What got me started on this review was a friend of mine asking if I would recommend buying Xia.And my initial reaction was “YES!”
However, the more I tried to explain *why* I would recommend it as a game, everything I came up with related to how cool the components are.
And re-reading my review, I sure sound like I’m hating on this game - I do like it, but I like what it could have been rather than what it is.
It can, of course be house ruled. House ruling is what separates gamers from casual players. If we want to fix something or just try out something that sounds fun, we make up a rule and see how it goes.
And that’s what a lot of the rules in Xia feel like to me. There are a number of ideas that I could see myself writing - things that sound cool when you say them.
But good game design is about weeding out the ideas that don’t translate into fun, or that subtract from the overall enjoyment of the game. And while I backed Xia on Kickstarter - and cheered for its creator when the found out they were fully funded - I really think Cody was more focused on the physical creation of the things in Xia rather than creating rules that maximize fun.
And it’s *hard* to figure out what makes a game broadly enjoyable. I get that. Tastes vary. I’m frustrated with randomness, other players see it as an equalizer.
But there are unquestionably rules in Xia that needed revision. Combat in the original RAW was weighted towards exchanges that ended in draws.
Trade had advantages that were very difficult to counter, and there are numerous instances where a ship risks a set chance of being destroyed in exchange for very little. A Tier II ship that blind jumps into a debris field will be destroyed 15% of the time - regardless of what outfits they have - and death makes them lose a turn. That’s just awful for lots of reasons. Yes, a blind jump is a risk, but 15% regardless of ship size/outfits/pilot fame is less fun than a mechanic that took any of that into account. A mechanic that destroyed ships outfits would be interesting, so a lasting consequence that fell short of “you blow up and lose a turn.”
And yes, the expansion removed the lose a turn rule, but that just proves that the original rule was terrible. Losing a turn is a terrible idea in pretty much any game, and much more so in a game where player turns are so long.
The length of player turns in Xia stem from a broadly defined set of actions that are allowed in a turn “Do as many as you want, in this general order.” Which is another great starting point, but there are so many opportunities to have improved this in the name of fun. Waiting for a player to finish their turn is the opposite of fun - and plenty of game systems have dealt with this by having parallel actions, or ways for players to interact with others when it’s not their turn. Xia’s list of choices become event rolls, drawing cards, selling things, shopping for outfits, and combat - most of which does not involve other players. The more players, the more downtime - so a larger game of Xia shifts most of a player’s game time into down time.
Which makes me wonder why there isn’t a shared business phase that all players do simultaneously - since you have to end your action phase before the business phase. Why don’t all players have an action phase on their turn, and after the last player has gone, everyone can do business? It wouldn’t solve the wait for your turn problem, but it would shorten the wait between doing things.
And off turn interactions/simultaneous resolution of actions - Xia could use a mechanic to make watching another player’s turn more interesting. Reserved movement, or unit activations that trigger when an opponent moves within range, or…something.
There might be a way to break out all possible actions into phases that can be resolved in turn order, or simultaneously, so there is less waiting - or at least a way to reward being attentive during another player’s turn. The giant mission card deck could have a lot more fun value if half those cards were special one-shot abilities that could be used when it’s not your turn.
There are just so many rules in Xia that never got refined, or pared down, or eliminated in the name of entertainment.
Prime example: Mission success rates are completely random. A smuggling mission has the same success fail rate whether it’s attempted by a zero-fame pilot in a tier I ship or a 15 fame pilot in a tier III behemoth. There is a rule that says previously completed missions can add to your die roll once. Which is almost a good idea, but a smuggling mission that fails on 1-12 on d20 that gets a +1 bonus for a previously completed smuggling mission is pretty underwhelming. Missions that scaled difficulty and reward based on a pilot’s fame, or a ship’s tier would be more interesting - or if completed missions provided lasting benefits (and had some indication of that use on the card), would go a long way to make missions seem like accomplishments, rather than events a player is powerless to control.
Ugh, I’m doing it again… I don’t hate Xia, I’m just frustrated at all the things that could have been cleaned up prior to publication.
And while coming up with house rules to address these shortcomings is easy, determining whether or not they hold up over time is real work - work that gamers should have been able to rely on the game publisher to have done.
Rules like “Draw three mission cards” or “use completed missions to add 1 to like mission rolls” smack of last minute changes to game issues that warranted comprehensive fixes.
I haven’t combed through all the house rule suggestions on these forums, and I need to do that. I’d like to see what others have tried and how they’ve evaluated their changes. There’s got to be a way to turn Xia into what it deserves to be.